1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communications to programmable multiple receivers, and more particularly to a wireless user sending messages to multiple recipients.
2. Background Information
Thanks to improvements in technology and widespread consumer interest, once-exotic forms of communication have become commonplace, and today the average consumer has access to a broad array of communications services. The Internet and wireless telephony, once the preserve of an elite few, now routinely supplement traditional telephone services and are frequently supplied by the same carriers. Even inexpensive home computers now include facsimile capability. Businesses employing mobile employees can furnish them with economical pagers that incorporate advanced features, such as text transmission and Internet access.
The sheer proliferation of communication options, while greatly improving access and convenience, has engendered problems as well. The existence of a communication channel does not ensure that the recipient of a message will be “listening” to that particular channel at a given time, yet the sender of a message has no way to know this. Indeed, more channels of communication traffic mean more demands on the attentions of potential recipients, who, feeling besieged by the assault of e-mail, voice mail, pages, etc., may simply inactivate some communication devices at different times. Message senders, therefore, are faced with the choice of risking non-delivery of their messages, or painstakingly re-transmitting a message on every possible mode of communication modality.
It may also be difficult to transmit the same message to multiple recipients. While a single e-mail message, sent once, can reach an unlimited number of destinations, phone messages must be repeated for each call. Moreover, different recipients may have access to different types of communication channels; perhaps some recipients can be reached efficiently only by e-mail, others by fax, and still others by page.
The integration of communication input devices also raises the prospect of messages having multiple forms of content. Today, a single message may include input from a variety of sources (e.g., voice and text); transmitting such a message by traditional means may be quite cumbersome, involving multiple separate transmissions that must be coordinated and packaged for the receiver to present a coherent message.
U.S. Ser. No. 09/496,170, filed on Feb. 1, 2000 and entitled Multi-Mode Message Routing and Management discloses, inter alia, a facility for transmission of messages composed on one or more input devices to a single or multiple recipients by means of one or plural communication modalities. Such communication modalities may include, for example, conventional or wireless telephone, facsimile transmission, pager, e-mail, postal mail or courier. Thus, a message may be directed to a single recipient via multiple modalities, such as e-mail and fax, in order to ensure the earliest possible receipt of the message; or it may be directed to multiple recipients by a single modality or by different modalities (e.g., some recipients receive the message by e-mail, others by fax, others by phone). Another application program interface was designed to work with the '170 application, and a provisional patent application entitled Application Program Interface for Multi-Mode Message Handling, Ser. No. 60/621,188, was filed on Jul. 21, 2000. This provisional application is hereby incorporated by reference herein.
The invention disclosed in the '170 application may include functionality for determining whether a message has been received (e.g., telephone and e-mail polling), as well as automatic sender notification upon confirmation of receipt. Moreover, in addition to monitoring messages in order to confirm their receipt, the invention may facilitate recipients' responses. In this way, the invention can orchestrate multi-question surveys utilizing multiple communication modes; for example, individuals contacted directly can respond immediately, while others can respond later in accordance with instructions delivered to them—e.g., via a web site or by calling a toll-free number. Additionally, the responses to these questions can in turn be automatically delivered to a human or remote system to initiate further actions or system behaviors, thus completing a step in a workflow.
It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, the drawings, and methods of use, the present invention is not intended to be limited to these embodiments and methods of use. Rather, the present invention is of broad scope and is intended to be defined as only set forth in the accompanying claims.